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Triginta

by Black Crucifixion

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1.
Should I cut out your tongue not to hear your lies/ Should I poke out your eyes as to blind you to me/  Should I break your legs to keep you off my trail/ Curse your name and you’ll be no more/ And the art is the art of the dead/ And the light is the light of the dead/ And the life is the life of the dead/ Worth the hell, whatever the cost/ Worth the hell, whatever the cost/ You bitch and you moan for all that is lost/ Worth the hell, whatever the cost/
2.
Ice knows your bones/ Winter has memory/ The last page of history is written by the victor/ Blackness eternal erases your scribblings/ The first snow of the last winter/ I’m not a pacifist you can take war for it/ Beg and plea in unison but the snow must go on/ The last page of history is written by the victor/ Blackness eternal erases your scribblings/
3.
Throneburner 03:34
With a fire in their hearts/ The hooded ones now advance/ Led by the one forgotten once/ With a fire in his heart/ Throneburner/ Hymn of hate, lied of wrath/ Angel eyes tired of lies/ Ignites the flame to purify/ Soundtracked by the hymns of hate/
4.
5.
Frailest 03:16
6.
7.
8.
9.

about

“Being the odd one out. That’s Black Crucifixion’s existence in a nutshell. They’ve been around since the very birth of Finnish black metal, yet they never released a classic Finnish black metal album. There’s no Ugra-Karma or Drawing Down the Moon in the band’s discography.”

Those are the first three sentences of the intro paragraph of the interview article I conducted with Forn and wrote in early 2013 right on the heels of the release of Coronation of King Darkness. I believe I had strung those words together already before even having the discussion with him, because when it came to Black Crucifixion I, too, was consumed by toying with the big question if Black Crucifixion deserve to be mentioned alongside with Beherit, Impaled Nazarene and Archgoat or not. Well, if it was good enough for an intro back then…

However, I do feel that it still very nicely describes the place that is forever reserved for Black Crucifixion “in the grand scheme of things” as I wrote back in 2013 and apparently still do, as if there wasn’t a more hackneyed expression for an ontological structure. Yet something has changed. The meaning those words create when they are placed one after another in that very exact way has changed. It’s still the same words, so, then, during the past eight years it must be the band that has changed. Or developed rather.

I’m very glad that 2013 interview captured Black Crucifixion in what now, in hindsight, seems almost like a defining moment for the band. I walked into Forn’s “relatively fancy office room” (still gotta love that) to interview a band I thought was interesting from a historical perspective and a band that had always had potential and good songs but also a band that, perhaps, had something to prove. Now, listening to that roughly one-hour interview recording for the purpose of this writeup I realize even better that which I already realized a couple of months after the interview and after spending enough time with the monumental record that is Coronation of King Darkness. Black Crucifixion had developed into a band whose music was even more engaging than it was “interesting”. They had developed into a band whose music had become timeless in the sense that its worth as a historical artefact started feeling secondary to its quality and listenability, if even that, and its position in some order of precedence or some other hierarchical collective they were never even part of as irrelevant as it fucking rightfully should be anyway, again, “in the grand scheme of things”.

What that defining moment did is that it also changed all of Black Crucifixion’s music. It made “Serpent of Your Holy Garden” sound – not like the BC anthem it used to be – but, even better, a brilliant song that still only had half of the brilliance they would later exhibit. In 2013 Forn said Hope of Retaliation was a promise of things to come, but now in 2021 it’s easy, perhaps somewhat anachronistically, to hear that promise already on The Fallen One of Flames, as if everything they had done before had prepared for the big Coronation. When Lightless Violent Chaos was released, I was fairly unmoved. Not because I didn’t like the album. On the contrary. It was fucking great, as expected after what happened in 2013, so nothing surprising there.

We like to look back to find and retrace every path we’ve ever walked for the sole purpose of walking them again and again. That’s our pathetic existence in a nutshell. Running in circles. Intuitively that feels like how most bands and artists – also the good ones – exist and, if they’re lucky, prosper. Knowing that makes me respect the individuals and artists who make their way out of those mental cages and do it successfully even more. However, for Black Crucifixion to reach their musical potential breaking the molds was imperative. As Forn told back in 2013 they spent most of the first 20 years of Black Crucifixion trying to find the right path while “carrying ideas and riffs from the day the band started writing music”. In this way the band Promethean or the album Faustian Dream don’t feel like sidesteps, because they fulfilled their purpose in Black Crucifixion’s quest for finding a way to where they are right now with all the stuff they think has been worth holding onto for 30 years. And if Forn is to be believed it might be the end of the trail they found on Hope of Retaliation. This milestone, together with the end of their third decade as a band, is aptly celebrated with the release of Triginta, a companion piece to that aforementioned magnificent little album that, too, has changed over the years. The trail has led Black Crucifixion to an edge of a cliff. And by now we should have learned they’re not the type of a band who turn back.

But the question still lingers: Does Black Crucifixion deserve the right to be mentioned alongside Beherit, Impaled Nazarene and Archgoat? I firmly believe they don’t. Instead, Black Crucifixion has developed into the caliber of a band that deserves to be mentioned next to no one.

Juho Mikkonen
Helsinki, 2021

credits

released November 26, 2021

Produced by Black Crucifixion. Engineered by AKI EKQVIST, MATIAS HELLE and Black Crucifixion at Owl Cave and Drophammer studios 2011-2021. Pre-production 1990-2020. Mixed by AKI EKQVIST and Black Crucifixion. Mastered by JAAKKO VIITALÄHDE at Virtalähde. Live tracks from Reykjavik, Oulu, Helsinki, Turku. Live engineers MIIKA HEINONEN, TERO KOSTERMAA and TOMMI SINIRANTA. Art Direction by Black Crucifixion. “Holy Smoke” illustration by ERKKI NAMPAJÄRVI. Original Black Crucifixion logo by TANELI JARVA. Crew LASSE PAASTO and T-MU IIVARI.

Black Crucifixion on Triginta:
E.HENRIK – Basses, woodwind, keyboards, guitar, soundscapes.
E.R.KILL – Guitar.
FORN – Voice, soundscapes, guitar.
P.A. TOTENRAUM – Drums.


REKKU RECHARDT – Guitar.
DARTH LA LA – Voice.
V.S. SCORPIUS – Drums.


Thanks to:
JORN RAP, MARK “MAYHEM” MAHER, PEKKA WITIKKA, Laboratorio Uleåborg, JÖRG HEEMAN, JUHA KULPPI, JARI PIRINEN. Verituuli vie.

FALLEN PAGES PRODUCTIONS 2021

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BLACK CRUCIFIXION Rovaniemi, Finland

Finnish black metal for people who like music. Since 1991. Booking: contact_bc@yahoo.com

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